Tag: Scandals

Rightwing Crack-Up: Minuteman Board Says $400k Is Missing – Fires Founder Jim Gilchrist

Jon Ponder

Earlier this month, the board of directors of the Minuteman anti-illegal immigrant group forcibly removed founder Jim Gilchrist as president, saying it found over $400,000 missing from the organization’s bank accounts.

“[When] we talk about the rule of law as an organization fighting illegal immigration, we too as an organization must be in compliance with the rule of law,” Stewart said. “When we allow these things to occur with any organization, we send a message to the public.”

Gilchrist took the matter to court yesterday, asking a judge to reinstate him, and leveling counter-charges at his former allies:

Gilchrist said all money raised by his organization was accounted for and that his critics had leveled false allegations to gain control of the organization. In court papers, he accused his opponents of hacking into the Minuteman website, stealing money from Minuteman bank accounts, diverting other money to funds they control and stealing 20,000 pieces of letterhead and envelopes.

And Guy Mailly, Gilchrist’s attorney, argued in court that the three members on the seven-member board who ousted Gilchrist had no voting power and, if they had, they voted him out without a required quorum.

Minuteman board members say that:

[A] direct mail company helped raise $750,000 for the group in 2006, but that she believes the Minuteman campaign received only $311,000. [New treasurer Deborah] Courtney said she and others had been unable to trace the rest of the money…

Gilchrist’s opponents also allege in interviews that he used Minuteman funds to promote the book he co-wrote — “Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders” — but kept the royalties.

They also said he should not have used $13,000 in Minuteman funds to defend himself in court against their allegations. He said the group must pay to defend itself against “rogues.”

Rev. Marvin Stewart, the group’s new president says that Gilchrist’s charisma drew him into the group, but an organization set up to fight something illegal ought to be rigorous about obeying the law. “[When] we talk about the rule of law as an organization fighting illegal immigration, we too as an organization must be in compliance with the rule of law,” Stewart said. “When we allow these things to occur with any organization, we send a message to the public.”

Are you sure you’re a Republican, Rev. Stewart?

Juror Out in Libby Trial But Deliberations to Continue

Jon Ponder

Reuters:

One juror in the perjury trial of former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby was dismissed on Monday after she told the judge she had been exposed to information about the case outside of court.

Judge Reggie Walton said the jury would continue to deliberate with 11 members.

“It’s imperative that you not have any contact with any information regarding this case from any source outside this courtroom,” Walton told the 11 remaining jurors.

Had an alternate been called to replace the dismissed juror, the jury would have had to begin its deliberations anew. The jury, which consisted of eight women and four men, has been deliberating since last Wednesday.

Rightwing Terrorist Terry Nichols Says FBI Was Behind OK City Attack

Jon Ponder

Oh, here we go:

Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official “apparently” was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah.

The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government “in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma,” Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit.

Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah had no comment on the allegations. The FBI and Justice Department in Washington, D.C., also declined comment.

Republican Hack Knew Pelosi Plane Story was False Even as He Peddled It

Trish

A little follow-up by the hometown paper on the bellicose voice behind the “Nancy Pelosi’s plane is bigger” brouhaha shows why the public is over Republicans.

He calls the Pelosi plane story, whatever its legitimacy, “the first break [Republicans] have had from the media in driving our message since before the Mark Foley story broke.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Bartow, Fla.) was out in front on the story, supplying quotes and moral high ground by claiming Pelosi wanted a more luxurious plane than her predecessor, Big Denny Hastert. But the 32-year-old wonderGOoP blames the media for starting it and says he was only exploiting the opening they gave him.

Ick.

Putnam now acknowledges he had no personal knowledge of any Pelosi request. He said he was commenting on an anonymously-sourced story in The Washington Times and additional coverage from CNN.

“This was a classic case where the media got out in front of us,” Putnam said. “Did we jump on it? Yes.”

And he is unapologetic about that. He calls the Pelosi plane story, whatever its legitimacy, “the first break [Republicans] have had from the media in driving our message since before the Mark Foley story broke.”

Let’s get this straight. Putnam sees Pelosi needing a plane that will fly nonstop to California instead of Illinois equivalent to former Rep. Mark Foley spending years pressuring teenage male pages for sex while the Republican leadership at best turned a blind eye and at worse, covered it up?

Ick.

But Putnam is just getting warmed up — he’s been appointed chairman of the House Republican conference committee.

It is the conference chairman’s responsibility to coordinate message and manage media relations for House Republicans. That means developing themes that counter and discredit an agenda set by the new Democratic majority. It’s a role Putnam has embraced in the new Congress.

…After Democrats swept to a congressional majority in November’s elections, Putnam moved up in the Republican leadership to conference chairman, the third-ranking House Republican position. Only Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the whip, Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, outrank Putnam.

And if you’re expecting him to play fair, forget it. Facts just get in the way of whatever makes the best story.

…a set of talking points titled “Air Force 3 – A symbol of Democrat Excess” remained prominently displayed on the regularly updated Web site of the House conference committee days after the story was discredited. It mentioned Pelosi by name and said she was pursuing “an unprecedented perk.”

Asked about the talking points Friday, Putnam responded: “You must check the Web site more often than I do.”

…Putnam blamed any unfairness in how the Pelosi plane issue was portrayed on the media that covered it, and he said he found it “curious” that reporters would question how the story spread.

I guess reporters should just accept these stories on their face and make his life that much easier.

Ick.

Libby Closing Arguments: Both Sides Put Bush Administration on Hot Seat

Jon Ponder

Too bad nothing will come of it:

In his closing argument, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the chief prosecutor, said that disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity was used by the White House to discredit her husband’s assertions that the Bush administration had distorted intelligence to justify invading Iraq. He said the disclosure of her name cast a cloud over the Bush White House in general and over Mr. Cheney in particular.

But Mr. Wells argued for the defense that when Ms. Wilson’s name was first disclosed in the summer of 2003, Mr. Libby had been so preoccupied with growing questions about the inability of United States forces in Iraq to find any unconventional weapons, a principal justification for going to war, that he did not have time to pay attention to the issue of Ms. Wilson.

“The wheels are falling off the Bush administration,” Mr. Wells said. “Thousands of young kids are on the ground there. It’s a crazy period.”

And:

Mr. Fitzgerald seemed for the first time to lend his weight publicly to the assertion by critics that Ms. Wilson’s identity was disclosed to punish Mr. Wilson and undermine his credibility.

Mr. Fitzgerald said the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity had left “a cloud over the White House over what happened” as well as a cloud over Mr. Cheney because he had been behind the effort to counter Mr. Wilson’s charges.

Neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else was charged with unlawfully disclosing Ms. Wilson’s identity. But Mr. Libby was charged with misleading the grand jury and investigators.

“Don’t you think the American people are entitled to a straight answer?” Mr. Fitzgerald asked of the jury. He said that “a critic points fingers at the White House and as a result his wife gets dragged into the newspapers.”

He said Mr. Libby “made a gamble, he threw sand in the eyes of the grand jury” rather than tell the truth and risk being prosecuted for leaking her name.

Scaife Funded ‘Arkansas Project’ to Destroy Clinton, Now Says He Was a ‘Pretty Good’ President

Jon Ponder

In the 1990s, Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife provided at least $1.8 million to fund the “Arkansas Project,” a conspiracy to dig up dirt on Bill and Hillary Clinton in their home state. The project was successful in that it eventually led to the snaring of Pres. Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a perjury trap, and their sex lie under oath led to his impeachment.

Rightwingers like to blame the September 11 attacks on Pres. Clinton, saying he was distracted by his personal problems. This is bull, of course. But if it were true, the real culprits would include Scaife, Olson and Tyrrell.

Another result of the Arkansa Project was that it softened support for Clinton’s would-be successor, Vice Pres. Al Gore, thus paving the way for the Bush administration and six diasastrous years of conservatives’ corrupt control of the government, as well as the war in Iraq, which has been called the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history.

Now, however, an aide to Scaife says the reclusive billionaire has changed his mind about Bill Clinton:

Christopher Ruddy, who once worked full-time for Mr. Scaife investigating the Clintons and now runs a conservative online publication he co-owns with Mr. Scaife, said, “Both of us have had a rethinking.”

“Clinton wasn’t such a bad president,” Mr. Ruddy said. “In fact, he was a pretty good president in a lot of ways, and Dick feels that way today.”

The purpose of the Arkansas campaign was to hobble the Clinton presidency by spreading lies, half-truths and rumors about the Clintons. According to sources that include the invaluable, “Hunting of the Presidency,” by Joe Conanson and Gene Lyons, the Arkansas Project operated out of the offices of the American Spectator magazine, a mouthpiece for rightwing ideology. Another good source for this story is David Brock, whose book, “Blinded by the Right,” describes how he worked as a “hit man,” writing deliberately false news stories about the Clintons’ personal lives at the behest of American Spectator and its editor-in-chief, Emmett Tyrell Jr.

(Brock has repented and now runs the liberal watchdog organization, Media Matters for America.)

The administrator of Scaife’s funding for the Arkansas Project, according to these and other sources, was Ted Olson, a longtime pal of Whitewater inquisitor Ken Starr. There is much speculation, along with some evidence, that Olson or his minions fed Starr’s Whitewater investigation information collected by the Arkansas Project. This connection was a key element of the “vast rightwing conspiracy” Hillary Clinton referred to during her appearance on the Today Show on January 27, 1998.

Olson’s late wife Barbara was one of the rightwing blondes in the 1990s that included Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, who used their virulent hatred of the Clintons to became media stars. Barbara Olson wrote an anti-Hillary screed titled, “Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton.” (She died onboard the plane that hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.)

In 2000, Ted Olson argued for the Bush-Cheney campaign in Bush v. Gore at the Supreme Court, thus delivering the presidency to the man who will forever be known as the Worst President Ever. Olson was rewarded by being named Bush’s first solicitor general, a post once held by his friend, Ken Starr.

Rightwingers like to blame the September 11 attacks on Pres. Clinton, saying he was distracted by his personal problems. This is bull, of course. But if it were true, the real culprits would include Scaife, Olson and Tyrrell, who drummed up moral outrage about the president’s peccadillos. Other presidents, including the current president’s father, have reportedly had affairs while in office without the intrusion of public scrutiny.

Now that Scaife has seen the light, it seems that the least he could do is offer a full accounting of what was done in his name, and with his money, in connection with the “get Clinton” project.

Libby Was Bush Team’s Only Incompetent Liar

Jon Ponder

The hallmark of the Bush administration — its short summary in future history books — is its utter incompetence in all things but one: lying. So it is surprising — and not a little ironic — that a former member of the White House leadership has proved to be a thoroughly incompetent liar.

Why did Libby expect Russert to back him up? If there were any justice, someone would put Russert under oath and ask him why an official in the Office of the Vice President thought Russert would willingly risk federal perjury charges for him.

Worse news for the Bush team: Not only was he caught on tape telling lies badly, he was under oath at the time.

Based on audiotapes of Scooter Libby’s testimony before a Grand Jury that were played this week in his perjury trial in the CIA Leak scandal, we now know that Libby, a former special assistant to Pres. Bush and chief of staff to Vice Pres. Cheney, hadn’t even bothered to work out his false story before he was interrogated.

David Shuster on Countdown Tuesday night described an obvious “tell” in Libby’s lousy performance lying to the Grand Jury:

Scooter Libby, in a very sort of soft and hesitant voice, kept denying that he talked about Valerie Wilson with government officials, and then kept repeating Tim Russert‘s name over and over, as if Russert were Libby‘s holy grail.

Quote, “All I recall that week is that Tim Russert conversation.”

Another quote, “My first recollection is Tim Russert telling me that.” Another quote, “I don‘t recall any other conversations earlier in the week about it.”

Libby’s conversation with Russert, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, in July 2003, is at the center of the government’s perjury case against him. Libby’s version of events — that Russert was the first to tell him that the wife of an administration critic was a covert CIA agent working in the counterproliferation of terror weapons — had been disputed by six other witnesses in his trial before Russert took the stand yesterday and denied he told Libby the CIA agent’s name.

Here’s Libby’s sworn Grand jury testimony about his converrsation with Tim Russert:

[…]

It’s a Miracle: Rev. Ted Haggard Is ‘Completely Heterosexual’ Now

Jon Ponder

Here is good news for unhappy homos and homo-hating Christians alike. Rev. Ted Haggard has completed his therapy and apparently has forsworn consorting with male prostitutes forever. After only three weeks of therapy, he has been judged to be “completely heterosexual” now:

Evangelicals believe science has a liberal bias.

“He is completely heterosexual,” [said Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur, Colorado, one of four ministers who oversaw Haggard’s re-education therapy.] “That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

“If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,” he said. “We’re into this thing over 90 days and it hasn’t happened.”

Science, of course, says that sexual identity is engrained and immutable, and that no amount of guilt, recrimination or praying away the gay can change it. Of course, Evangelicals like Rev. Haggard believe science has a liberal bias, as Stephen Colbert put it.

No word on whether Haggard addressed the issues behind his and his wife’s admitted use of crystal methadrine.

What If Vice Pres. Gore Had Outed a Covert CIA Specialist in Terror Weapons?

Jon Ponder

Imagine the reaction from the media and the Republican Party if this story had been in the news ten years ago:

Looks like Cheney will get away with jeopardizing our national security without punsihment, or even a mild rebuke.

Sworn testimony has revealed that Vice Pres. Al Gore masterminded the unmasking of a covert CIA agent who specialized in the terrorist blackmarket for weapons of mass destruction — and that Gore’s motive was to exact political retribution against the agent’s husband, an outspoken critic of Clinton-Gore policies.

It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that Vice Pres. Gore would have been hounded from office within weeks of such headlines — as Vice Pres. Mondale or any other Democratic vice president would have been.

And yet we now know from testimony by an FBI agent and others at Scooter Libby’s perjury trial in the CIA Leak scandal that it was not Karl Rove who masterminded the campaign to reveal agent Valerie Plame’s identity, as most of us assumed — it was Libby’s boss, Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States.

It also clear from the evidence that Cheney was fully aware that Plame worked undercover for the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division, where she was involved hands-on in tracking of illegal sales and shipments of WMD around the world. It is also clear that Cheney was more than willing to risk whatever intelligence assets Plame had developed in order to retaliate against her husband, former Amb. Joe Wilson, who had dared to call the Cheney-Bush administration on its lies about Iraq’s purported nuclear capabilities.

If Cheney were a Democrat, and these accusations had been made against him as part of sworn testimony, the reaction in Washington would be as clamorous as it would be swift:

  • Investigations would be launched by both the Senate and House committees on national security and government affairs.
  • Even in advance of the hearings, the House would have drawn up Bills of Impeachment against the vice president and probably the president as well.
  • Fox News would be leading with the story wall-to-wall, couching the news as a deliberate, pro-terrorist security breach orchestrated from the White House.
  • Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts would be hammering away at the vice president, calling his patriotism into question and implying that he was revealing national secrets at the behest of his boss, the president.

Instead, what we have gotten from the media and the Congress is bascially, “So what? It’s just Cheney being Cheney.” It is apparent that the vice president will get away with jeopardizing our national security without punsihment, or even a mild rebuke.

Settled: SF Mayor Gavin Newsome Is Not Gay

Jon Ponder

Hard to say what this will do to the career of one of the California Democratic Party’s few young stars. He certainly had a future in statewide and, probably, national politics ahead of him. Damn:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s re-election campaign manager resigned Wednesday after confronting the mayor about an affair Newsom had with his wife while she worked in the mayor’s office, City Hall sources said.

Alex Tourk, 39, who served as Newsom’s deputy chief of staff before becoming his campaign manager in September, confronted the mayor after his wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, told him of the affair as part of a rehabilitation program she had been undergoing for substance abuse, said the sources, who had direct knowledge of Wednesday’s meeting.

Rippey-Tourk, 34, was the mayor’s appointments secretary from the start of his administration in 2004 until last spring. She told her husband that the affair with Newsom was short-lived and happened about a year and a half ago, while the mayor was undergoing a divorce from his then-wife, Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified.